January 8, 2013

Explaining the Expletives: A Glum John Boehner, ‘I need this job like I need a hole in the head’

Explaining the Expletives: A Glum John Boehner, ‘I need this job like I need a hole in the head’
by Sarah Jones


John Boehner may be in over his head. He explained his reasons for telling Harry Reid to “go f*ck yourself” to Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, in an interview titled, “The Education of John Boehner.”
“Those days after Christmas,” he explains, “I was in Ohio, and Harry’s on the Senate floor calling me a dictator and all kinds of nasty things. You know, I don’t lose my temper. I never do. But I was shocked at what Harry was saying about me. I came back to town. Saw Harry at the White House. And that was when that was said,” he says, referring to a pointed “go [blank] yourself” addressed to Mr. Reid.

Yes, you see, Harry said mean things about Boehner and this is something you just don’t do in politics. I mean, you would never hear Republicans calling Obama Hitler, a Socialist, a Marxist, a Kenyan, or asking for something ridiculous like his birth certificate. If they had, certainly President Obama would have resorted to a good old “FU!” because that’s how the great leaders handle name calling. And certainly had a Republican accused Obama of “You lie!” during a State of the Union address, well, you would expect Obama to whip out a Boehner, “FU!”

The Speaker seems to think highly of his own political instincts, claiming that the sequester has Obama in a bad place because the President’s “liberal” base will come after him for the cuts to “entitlements” (aka: a Republican name for the Social Security fund that Americans have paid into all of their lives). “I got that in my back pocket,” he told Moore. (It’s stunning that Republicans do not know yet that it’s not just liberals who are opposed to cuts to Medicare and Social Security. They don’t read polls in order to deal with facts, but rather to mine for the next hit of denial.) However, this is the same man who was insulted by Harry Reid calling him a dictator, as if Reid really meant that Boehner was a dictator.

for the rest go to:
http://www.politicususa.com/glum-john-boehner-i-job-hole-head.html

January 8, 2013

The Good. Old. Days. Made in America re-visited

May 31, 1927, the last Ford Model T rolled off the assembly line. It was the first affordable automobile, due in part to the assembly line process developed by Henry Ford. It had 2.9-liter, 20-horsepower engine and could travel at speeds up to 45 miles per hour. It had a 10-gallon fuel tank and could run on kerosene, petrol, or ethanol, but it couldn't drive uphill if the tank was low, because there was no fuel pump; people got around this design flaw by driving up hills in reverse. Ford believed that "the man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed." The Model T cost $850 in 1909, and as efficiency in production increased, the price dropped. By 1927, you could get a Model T for $290. "I will build a car for the great multitude," said Ford. "It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one - and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."

January 7, 2013

GOP Freshmen fail to shut down the Government on the first day - Andy Borowitz observes

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Just hours after being sworn in at the U.S. Capitol, the freshman class of House Republicans said that they were disappointed that they failed to shut down the government on their first day in office.

“We were all like, ‘O.K., we’re sworn in, let’s shut this thing down,’” said freshman Rep. Byron Ernie (R-Kentucky). “We were all pretty bummed that the government just kept running.”
Rep. Ernie acknowledged that it might have been “overly optimistic” of the freshman Republicans to expect to engineer a government shutdown on their very first day, “but bringing the government to a random standstill was the whole reason we became Republicans,” he said.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) chuckled good-naturedly at the ambitions of the high-spirited G.O.P. freshmen, telling reporters, “I remember what it was like to be young and full of big ideas about crippling our historic institutions for no discernible reason whatsoever. There’s nothing like your first time.”
Surveying the cherubic faces of the incoming Republicans, he said, “They’re like kids who want to close down a candy store.”

Looking beyond the disappointment of his first day, Rep. Ernie said he was looking forward to “that magical day” when he and his fellow Republican freshmen get to participate in their very first government shutdown: “We’ll be paralyzing the government in the same building where John Boehner and Eric Cantor did it, and Newt Gingrich before them. It’s like playing basketball in the same arena as Michael Jordan.”


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/01/gop-freshmen-saddened-by-failure-to-shut-down-government-on-first-day.html#ixzz2HJN3hAHU

January 7, 2013

All The Things You Wouldn't Say In Front Of Your Own Mother That Were Said By The Media In 2012

I knew that a lot of this happened, some is new to me. The compilation of it made it more real, and it really sickens me. We must stand up against it. A simple shaking of the head or a tolerant smile will not do.
Disgusting is as disgusting does.


What did the news say about women in 2012?

Someone important once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I hope the people in this video got that message, because I don't want to hear any of these ridiculous comments again in 2013 ... or ever. 
Rebecca Eisenberg

http://www.upworthy.com/all-the-things-you-wouldnt-say-in-front-of-your-own-mother-that-were-said-by-the?c=upw1

January 7, 2013

If this did not warm my heart (which it did to the max) at least I got to listen to some Italian

Watch it happen:
Racist Chanting At A Professional Soccer Player Causes Something Awesome To Happen

When AC Milan's midfielder Kevin-Prince Boateng hears some vulgar and racist chants from the crowd, he decides enough is enough. He punts the ball toward the racist fans, and in a display of sportsmanship that will surely be talked about for some time, he proceeds to leave the field followed by his teammates and the ENTIRE opposing team. As all the players left the field together, the message to the fan community couldn't be clearer: It doesn't matter if you're a supporter, we will not play for racists.

http://www.upworthy.com/racist-chanting-at-a-professional-soccer-player-causes-something-awesome-to-happ?c=upw1

January 7, 2013

Not my photo - showing it anyway

It's the best depiction of a surprised building I've ever seen

January 6, 2013

The Bechdel test for Women in Movies - it takes about 2 min and fascinated and enlightened me

January 6, 2013

Paul Krugman - Ideology and Economics Jan.5, 2013

January 5, 2013, 8:37 am

Ideology and Economics

I’m in San Diego for the annual economics meetings, and am starting off this morning as a discussant of a paper by Roger Gordon and Gordon Dahl on the question of agreement versus disagreement among economists. (As far as I can tell, no public version of the paper is available yet).

Interestingly, Gordon and Dahl’s paper is empirical and quantitative. Their data come from the panel of economic experts put together by Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Each week since the fall of 2011, members of the panel have been asked whether they agree or disagree with a sample statement about economic affairs. These responses offer a quantitative measure of consensus or lack thereof on economic ideas; they can also be used to ask such questions as whether disagreements, when they occur, fall along a liberal/conservative divide.
And the picture Gordon and Dahl derive from this evidence is quite benign. On most issues, particularly where there is a lot of research, there is considerable consensus; and they can’t find evidence of ideological divides driving disagreement. Economics, they find, looks a lot like a normal field of scientific inquiry; to the extent that it seems otherwise, they suggest, it’s only because sometimes economists are working for politicians and are obliged to seem supportive.


for all of it go to:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/ideology-and-economics/

January 6, 2013

The 2013 Pop Quiz by Gail Collins : Test your New Year's knowledge

The 2013 Pop Quiz
By GAIL COLLINS
O.K., people, we are really in 2013. It took a few days, but now we’ve settled in. Test your New Year’s knowledge.

1Michele Bachmann announced she had introduced the first bill of the 113th Congress, a proposal to:
A) Revisit her Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act.
B) Repeal Obamacare.
C) Require the media to explain that when she says people should be “armed,” she means “armed with knowledge.”
D) Rename the National Institutes of Health in honor of any one of the “hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.”

2John Boehner began the new year by staving off a right-wing rebellion and getting re-elected to his awful job as speaker of the House. Which of these recent John Boehner statements was in his first address to the new Congress?
A) “Listen, I was born with a glass half full.”
B) “Ifs and ands and buts are like candy and nuts. If that were the case, every day would be Christmas.”
C) “We meet again at democracy’s great port of call.”
D) “We got some of the smartest people in the country who serve here, and some of the dumbest.”

3Over in the Senate, the No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, celebrated by announcing that:
A) “Now that I think about it, we really did go overboard on that filibuster thing.”
B) “It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal well being of our country.”
C) It was time to “stop obsessing about Obamacare.”
D) He was really sorry he once compared gay marriage to having a neighbor who “marries a box turtle.”

4One of the stars of the action-packed new year’s week in Congress was Vice President Joe Biden, who seemed to be everywhere. However Biden did NOT:
A) Say he sold a fiscal-cliff-ending deal to suspicious Senate Democrats by telling them: “This is Joe Biden, and I’m your buddy.”
B) Confuse the husband of an incoming senator during a swearing-in picture-taking by telling him, “Spread your legs. You’re going to be frisked.”
C) Tell Mitch McConnell he looked like a “cute little old hoot owl.”
D) Greet a muscular soldier with: “If you need any help on your pecs, let me know.”


5The biggest special election in the new year will be the one for the Senate in Massachusetts, presuming that John Kerry leaves to become secretary of state. Scott Brown could wind up running for the Senate four times in five years! Brown has already:
A) Announced that his truck now has 300,000 miles on it.
B) Questioned whether the Democratic favorite, Representative Edward Markey, actually lives in Massachusetts.
C) Told reporters that he was a Republican “only when it comes to money.”
D) Signed up to do a repeat of his 1982 Cosmo nude photo as “America’s Sexiest Middle-Aged Man.”

6In a dramatic end-of-the-year sports moment, boxer Juan Manuel Marquez knocked down his longtime rival Manny Pacquiao. Just before the match, Pacquiao was visited in his dressing room by a prominent Republican who said:
A) “Hi Manny, I’m Rick Santorum, and I want to tell you about a plot against our families by the United Nations. Also, I can do 50 push-ups.”
B) “Hi Manny, I’m Herman Cain. Do you enjoy pizza?”
C) “Hi Manny, I’m Newt Gingrich and this is my current wife, Callista.”
D) “Hi Manny. I’m Mitt Romney. I ran for president. I lost.”

8And there’s an upcoming reality TV series about:
A) An 85-year-old former governor of Louisiana and his 34-year-old wife, who he met as a pen pal while he was serving a prison term for bribery and extortion.
B) Those people in Kansas who are preparing for a zombie invasion.
C) The adventures of outgoing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s return to the private sector. In the first episode, Geithner and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel take a road trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
D) Joe Biden just being Joe Biden.

link for the quiz:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/01/05/opinion/05-gail-collins-quiz.html?ref=opinion

I took this quiz once and got 4 out of 4.
It's laughable that these happenings especially of course the ones I did not get right really happened.



Edited to add:
I messed up posting this. I had no idea the quiz would not re-set and it showed my answers in the link. I had to stand on my head pretending to be electric to fix this. I hope I did. And other than a bit of fun, it's not worth much anyway.
Sorry.
Better post next time.

January 5, 2013

Happy New Year. Worth checking for hints you can use!

http://www.afterfiftyliving.com/lifestyle/activeliving/50_Tips_for_Better_Living_76/